Trauma-Sensitive Yoga
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Your body is wise. It has built-in defenses that automatically cause you to fight, flight, or freeze to protect itself when it is under threat.
It may flee and get away, it may fight back against the threat, or it may need to freeze to survive. An experience becomes traumatic when there’s an override in this natural fight/flight/freeze response; when there is nothing you can do to avoid the inevitable, this self-protective system may break down. As a result, the fight/flight/freeze mechanism becomes over-activated, stuck in one of the defense responses (fight/flight/freeze), resulting in an inability to regain a sense of safety and relaxation.
Yoga is an integral part of the healing process.
Survivors of trauma need to have physical and sensory experiences to unlock their bodies, activate effective defense responses (fight/flight/freeze), tolerate their sensations, befriend their inner experiences, and cultivate new action patterns.
Trauma-Sensitive Yoga empowers survivors to notice, be curious, and observe, fostering a sense of mastery over themselves. This inner experience of mastery, involving emotions and sensations, provides new resources, energy, and the capacity to take effective action.